Silent Mid-Tower case desired

aeridusDec 7, 2006, 4:38 PM

My current 550W power supply isn't too bad, apart from the annoying blue lights coming from it, but my computer still makes an annoying buzzing sound. Are there any power supplies in the 400-550W range that don't have ridiculous extras like lights and make absolutely no noise whatsoever? I'm willing to pay up to $400 for a good power supply if need be, though ideally $200 would be a good price to pay. I don't plan on using special watercooled methods to cool down my machine further as it already runs at a pretty decent temperature, averaging between 90-100F, though a less hazardous method would probably be fine. My case is a mid-tower and my computer is a Pentium 4 Dual Core 2.80gHz, with an nVidia 7800 GS video card (AGP). The cpu and the video card are the only real energy hogs, and they both have fans directly on top as well.

Altogether, there's three fans in my system total: power supply fan, CPU fan, and video card fan. The power supply fan makes a low hum at the top of the case, the CPU fan makes a medium-pitched hum in the middle of the case, and the video card makes a high-pitched hum at the bottom of the case. If I could eliminate the noise from the power supply fan and the CPU fan, that would be perfect. So any CPU fan suggestions are welcome as well. I do have a duct that runs from the side of the case to the CPU fan, though, for maximum cooling.

Speaking of the fan, the fan was audible in the hot box by Test 2. The fan was noticeably audible (a little louder than what could be considered "quiet") during Test 3. Despite this, the fan spun back down as quickly as it spun up once the load was reduced. So in an actual PC, it's not very likely that this fan will spin up and stay spun up the way it did in the hot box, since I'm applying a static load and pumping essentially all of the heat generated by the load tester back into the case

Cooling is handled by a 120MM ADDA fan. But the impressive cooling characteristics of this power supply have more to do with the fan controller than it did the fan. I have to say that I never worked with a power supply that adjusted the fan RPM so precisely, to such subtle changes. When temperatures increased, the fan was quick to spin up, but when things cooled back down, the fan spun back down to a lower RPM. The fan never spun any faster than it needed too. I've gotten used to fan controllers that waited "too long" to spin the fan up, and then spun the fan up to full RPM leaving me with "all or nothing" fan noise.

You can also look at seasonic offering.

A quiet case like the antec P180B would help a lot too.

You don't have any case fan? Case fan can lower the overall temp of the computer allowing other fans to run at lower speed thus reducing overall noise.

Well, the case fan was adding more noise than it was saving on, and proved redundant since there was no noticable change in the overall temperature once removed. Like I said, the case is very well ventilated and doesn't have a lot of heat that stays inside. I can run powerful applications on it for a long amount of time and it barely crests 100F, compared to older machines I've had which ran much hotter. The only issue at this point is the noise of the remaining 3 fans, one of which is not changeable (but the video card fan is really rather quiet compared to the other two, just high pitched is all).

The Corsair does look like an excellent power supply; I do know that there are fanless power supplies but I'm not sure of how reliable they are. I would still greatly appreciate a good CPU fan too though, so if anyone knows of a powerful one that runs very quiet (silent, preferably) let me know.

Edit: Actually, the power supply I currently have may well be much quieter than the CPU fan, which I believe to be the main source of the hum. The power supply, like I mentioned before, has a very low pitched sound but the prevalent noise I hear is more of a mid-pitched sound. Also, my motherboard is a P4P800-VM.

Silent is a strong word, lol...The quitest PS I have used is a CoolMax 450. It has been in 10 comps and I modded it a bunch of times. It has a 3 way switch for the fan, Low, High and auto,It is now my bench tester PS.(I know some are gonna say "Its no OCZ or Tagan but it has worked well for me for several years)